The use of a CUE sheet (for those who want to know more...)
This part is slightly more difficult than the rest of the guide. It is useful if you want to reconstruct the original CD (this is what a CUE sheet is meant for). But it is not essential, you can alway consult this part later...
Action > Copy Selected Trackst > Uncompressed
(instead of : Action > Copy Selected Trackst > Compressed )
then EAC will give you big *.wav files but NOT compress them to *.mpc files (so you will not lose quality). You can now burn these *.wav files, using a CUE sheet, which will result in an Exact Audio Copy.
Note: is losing quality bad? Compressing once will usually result in a little quality loss. But what if you decompress to *.wav again and compress a second time? In general this is very bad and should be avoided! They call this 'Transcoding' (doing several encodings/compressions after each other) and this is something professional rippers are very scared of. Do never transcode!! Many mp3's from the internet have this problem, that's one of the reasons why mp3 sucks nowadays...
This is a confusing matter for most people, and there is a lot of misconceptions. Actually things are very easy. On popular demand I'll give here a short+clear explanation... There are several kinds of CUE sheets, one for each situation:
Action > Create Cue sheet > ... and you'll see several options:
[ 0 ] ('Current Gap Settings' is not a real option) [ 1 ] Single WAV File is the correct one if the CD was extracted as one big WAV file (not mentioned in this guide) [ 2 ] Multiple WAVs with Gaps... (noncompliant) is the normal one (in case gaps were appended to the previous track, which is done automatically: you don't have to do anything, just following this guide is enough. Some people prefer to do a gap detection (action > detect gaps) first and then tell EAC to append gaps to previous gaps (action > append gaps to previous track=default), but the result is the same as doing nothing like in the guide, that's why it says 'default'). [ 3 ] Multiple WAVs with leftout Gaps... is the correct one if you chose to leave gaps out during ripping (first do a gap detection, then check 'leave out gaps' (action > leave out gaps). Note: Don't do this (by leaving out gaps, you lose CD info). [ 4 ] Multiple WAVs with corrected Gaps... is the correct one if you chose to append gaps to the next track (instead of the previous track). Note: Don't do this either (annoying silences in the beginning of each track if played back on pc).
Important remark before starting: do we have a correct CUE sheet? (read the previous part!). A lot of people systematically make the wrong type of CUE sheet!You might be wondering now "Let's say I have a CUE made by someone else - how can I see what type that CUE is?" And you have a point, since many people systematically make the wrong CUE type! Anyhow, avoid using a wrong CUE for burning (since music would be considered as gap, which would give bizarre effects when tracks are played separately, or the CD is played in random order). It is possible to convert CUE sheets into each other but it is a pain in the arse! (manually, tricky calculations!). In such a case you will probably not want to use the CUE.
Usually gaps are appended every time to the previous track. That means the CUE should be type [ 4 ], mentioned above. I'll show how to distinguish the 2 most often used types ( [ 2 ] which is probably the correct one, and [ 4 ] which is probably a wrong type ). (when I say "probably", I mean that in most cases gaps are appended to the previous track (the default way), it is also a must for High Quality files, but you never know...) So I'll show it here for the two important ones, but I recommend you to take a CD, make all 4 types and compare them, after I have finished my speech ;-)
A gap (also called 'pregap') is the music part between 2 indexes ( = positions ). The gap starts at index00 and stops at index01. Suppose the gap was appended to the previous track ( type [ 1 ] )... that means that each ripped WAV file contains both the actual track plus the next gap! In other words: index00 must be somewhere in that (previous) WAV, and index01 must be on the end of that WAV (where the previous track stops and the next one starts). For example:
FILE "C:\Temp\...\01 - Lola.wav" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE "Lola"
PERFORMER "The Kinks"
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
TITLE "You really got me"
PERFORMER "The Kinks"
INDEX 00 04:01:70
FILE "C:\Temp\...\02 - You really got me.wav" WAVE
INDEX 01 00:00:00The above CUE excerpt from shows the gap info between track 1 ('FILE ... 01 - Lola'') and track 2 ('FILE ... 02 - You really got me'). (BTW the lines 'TRACK 01 AUDIO' and 'TRACK 02 AUDIO' are not worth attention). As mentioned before, each WAV contains both the actual track and the next gap. Index00 (here 04:01:70) marks where (in the first WAV) track 1 ends and the gap begins. BTW 04:01:70 is just before the end of the WAV (winamp tells me the WAV lasts about 04:02:00). The gap stops exactly on the end of this WAV (this is where the next WAV starts: index01 says '00:00:00').
In other words, this CUE excerpt says "the part starting from 04:01:70 untill the end of the WAV is a separate piece of music, namely the gap".
Now an example of a probably wrong CUE ( type [ 4 ] ). FILE 07 starts, but the gap goes from the beginning of this WAV (00:00:00) untill 00:01:55 (nearly 2 seconds). Then the gap ends and the actual track starts (from 00:01:55 untill the end). This is obviously a CUE of type [ 4 ] : proceeding gaps are appended to the beginning of the next track (07). In this case EAC made a WAV file consisting of the gap between tracks 6-7, followed by track 7 itself.
FILE "C:\Temp\Leonard Cohen - 07 - Suzanne.wav" WAVE
TRACK 07 AUDIO
TITLE "Suzanne"
PERFORMER "Leonard Cohen"
INDEX 00 00:00:00
INDEX 01 00:01:55Note: I am talking about 'gaps' all the time, in fact 'gap' is the word EAC uses for what is mostly called 'pregap'.
Got it? If not, rereading will surely help! Time to start burning now! NOTE: the CUE sheet should be edited before burning, otherwise you will get an error message when you go further (if the file are still on the original location, editing is superfluous). In order to edit, open the *.cue file (the CUE sheet) with notepad and remove all paths. For instance:
FILE "C:\Temp\...\01 - Lola.wav" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE "Lola"
PERFORMER "The Kinks"
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
TITLE "You really got me"
PERFORMER "The Kinks"
INDEX 00 04:01:70
FILE "C:\Temp\...\02 - You really got me.wav" WAVE
INDEX 01 00:00:00will become:
FILE "01 - Lola.wav" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE "Lola"
PERFORMER "The Kinks"
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
TITLE "You really got me"
PERFORMER "The Kinks"
INDEX 00 04:01:70
FILE "02 - You really got me.wav" WAVE
INDEX 01 00:00:00If you have an edited CUE sheet, we can start! Start EAC and go to:
Tools > Write CD-R
A window pops up ('CD Layout Editor'). Go to:
File > Load CUE Sheet...
and browse to the CUE sheet.
CD-R > Write CD-R
